


We Were Made in Pairs

by bitwicre



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Could Be Canon, Gen, How Do I Tag, M/M, POV Neil Josten, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-The King's Men, Sexuality, Team Dynamics, be nice, nosy teamates, okay, this is my first fic ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 07:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11939643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitwicre/pseuds/bitwicre
Summary: Neil finally gets fed up of his teamates nosiness about him and Andrew. Gets introspective about how much he belongs with Andrew and decides to shut them up with his own tragic backstory pain.





	We Were Made in Pairs

**Author's Note:**

> It's my first (published) fic! Fair warning I wrote on my phone at three am. I'm in love with the Foxes. Also I have no idea how to tag. Oh and non-beta'd. 
> 
> I dont know why, but the idea that no one actually knows how traumatized Neil is about craving intimacy is too tragic for me, so I fixed it. 
> 
> No actual Andrew shows up, bc it'd ruin the whole scene, but I imagine they'd talk about it later bc someone would tell him. Aaron takes a step towards being supportive. Its a baby step. Stumble. I made up some details, bc Neil needs more scars in his life.

They had gotten a few months peace, from being asked about their budding relationship. Everyone too excited still from their monumental win, but with life more securely settled in around them, the topic crept back up in everyones mind. 

Neither Andrew nor Neil made any outward show of their relationship, if it could be called that. But the newfound treaty between them did not go unnoticed. With Kevin out of danger and his promise to him kept, Andrew's violent possessiveness shifted in intensity, ever so slightly, to Neil. Although they never signaled the change like Dan and Matt, with easy touches and held hands, one was rarely without the other in public.

There were whispers among the general school about the pair, it wasn't any secret of the teams and rumors flew. With Katelyn as Aaron's girlfriend, it was inevitable. Their matching armbands made them even more conspicuous on campus. But Andrew didn't speak to anyone other than the Foxes, and Neil didnt socialize much more than he did, so their life was greatly unaffected. Neil dreaded being talked of as Nathaniel Wesninski, and so while irritating, the whispers he heard in the halls and at mealtimes about Andrew were preferable to other topics. Adolescent gossip fancied potential romance over criminal intrigue. 

The team was a different matter. Although their newly minted union changed some of intricacies in how Neil and Andrew saw each other, it did not change how little they wanted the incursions into their private business. Andrew's violence and hostility kept most of them from asking him anything too direct. And he responded similarly if anyone asked Neil anything in his presence. 

But this did not stop the team from accosting him on his own, and he was less sure how to answer them. His way of dealing with people for so long had been to lie and weave a truth they would believe that he wasn't sure how to get what he wanted with only the truth. He deflected and answered in partial truths, and let them make assumptions, but for some reason this did not satisfy them for long enough to leave him alone. 

Over one of the long weekends, the team found themselves eating dinner in the girls' room after practice. Ordinarily, Andrew would have been with them but his weekly session with Betsy had been rescheduled for that evening. They lounged about in easy conversation, between rounds of card games and drinking games. Neil had tuned out their chatter, as he read Exy articles on his phone, nursing a drink. He drank more regularly now, but rarely much and usually not without Andrew nearby. 

He was pulled into the conversation when Allison called his name and asked, "What about you?"

It took him a second to realize that she was asking him the question she had been asked by Dan a few minutes ago. They had been talking about first kisses. All been quick to swap stories back and forth, then volunteered similar stories of best and worst hookups. But he played dumb, as he looked up from his phone, to buy time to come up with an answer. 

He didn't want to talk with them about this. He knew that Allison in particular was keen on him specifying when he and Andrew had first gotten involved. Whether it was to settle a bet or because of her gossip mongering nature, he wasn't sure. Probably it was both. So he knew the question wasn't an innocent one. 

"When was your first kiss?" She asked with deceptive hint of innocent curiosity. 

"I was thirteen," he said simply, not offering up any further details like the others had. 

The side conversations did not go quiet, but he felt the interest in the room shift towards him. Nicky, quick to jump on what he surely saw as Allison's plan of attack. "Who was it with? Tell us." he asked excitedly. 

"Some French-Canadian girl, in Quebec." He put his phone down reluctantly, "I don't remember her name." He remembered the pain of his mother's punishment much more clearly than the infraction which had brought it on. 

Nicky clearly wanted more details, and Allison would not let the subject drop so easily either. 

They both asked at the same time. Nicky said, "A girl?" And Allison pressed, "Who kissed who?"

He wasnt sure how to get out of this conversation, leaving the room seemed too extreme, but he was decidedly uncomfortable. So he just nodded at Nicky and then looked at Allison and shrugged. This seemed to annoy her more than him, she narrowed her eyes at him as she asked. "And what about your best hookup?"

His only hookups ever had been with Andrew, and he was not about to answer her that. So he just looked at her, unimpressed with her tact. She pursed her lips, but Nicky tried redirecting the conversation to a more friendlier tone.

"Did you do any dating, at all?" He went on, "When you were in school, maybe?"

He looked at Nicky and although everyone could hear, he tried to answer only him, "I wasn't allowed."

"What do you mean?" He asked. And Allison sat expectant. Dan looked over at him as well. Kevin and Matt were further away, listening probably, but looking at the game they were playing. 

"I mean my mother didn't allow me to form attachments," Neil answered, offering up a topic other than who he knew they wanted to talk about. 

"She didn't want you dating girls, or boys?" Allison pressed on blithely. 

"She didn't want me to learn how to trust anyone. And made sure the lesson stuck." He was not hostile, but his told was colder than he had intended it. Dan frowned. And Renee looked at Allison warningly. 

Now Nicky's tone was less inquisitive and more serious, "What do you mean?"

He wished Andrew had been here to stop them from asking so many questions. 

"I was not to make friends that weren't useful, and then even they could not know anything true about me." he said, not sure if he should go on. "But anything like attraction was forbidden."

Nicky's eyes narrowed, but the anger wasn't directed at him, "You can't forbid attraction."

Aaron was looking in on the conversation now, and Renee looked like she wanted to intervene, but he gave her only a glance and answered Nicky in German. "You can beat it out after enough times."

He was suddenly angry, not just uncomfortable and annoyed, but actually furious. In the past year so much of everything had changed not just around him, but in the way he did things. Lies and survival had been his only companions since he was a child, and the past months of truth-telling and honestly went against every single lesson his mother has grilled into him. 

He did not regret veering from her path for him, and disobeying the rules she had repeated to him with her dying breath. Not when he had all that he had wanted for so long and more than he had ever known to want for. But he had told so few truths and then so many, that he did not know the difference between secrecy and privacy anymore. But he felt that these were not secrets he was keeping, what they wanted from him. 

They wanted easy answers that they imagined existed, because they were normal. They were all Foxes, but all of them wanted normalcy, worked for it. But he knew he would never be normal. And it was like Nicky had told him about Andrew when they'd first met. 'His lines are not your lines.' But they were more similar than he could have imagined then. 

All the death and pain Neil had been wrapped in since his first breath, Andrew gazed at with even eyes. And the warped state Andrew's soul was in was too much for anyone, especially himself; but Neil was not afraid to help him mend it. Their lines were not normal lines, murder and death and unimaginable violence were simply facts to them both. Easy as breathing. 

Even Kevin, who had grown under the viscous care of Riko and his ilk, had balked to hear of exactly how he had died from Neil. But Andrew had had the same shining smile in his eyes as Neil had when he had realized that the one responsible for the onslaughts against his Foxes was dead. 

How could he explain that to them. How could he make them see that they would not be normal like they wanted them to be. They were both monsters but somehow could breathe easier they closer to each other they were. He leaned on and trusted Andrew more than even he knew how to. 

Somehow Neil could speak the same terrible language Andrew did, and he had never once been frightened of him. The only fear he had was how badly Andrew could hurt himself. Andrew could always sense the way that Neil's lying was always so much smoother than his truth. Where his sore spots were, and he was not afraid of breaking him in places so that he could be put back better than before. 

But right now, he wanted them all to stop prying and digging themselves into his and Andrew's affairs. Why couldn't they be happy with his honest answers? It was not, he realized with newfound indignation, any of their business. 

So he continued in English. 

"If my mother thought I was getting too close to someone, we would be gone that night. If she saw me even touch anyone my age from the time  
I was ten," he glanced at Kevin's stony profile, remembering the way he had thought the two Exy playing boys at Edgar Allan would be his friends. "She'd make sure I couldn't use my hands the next day." He splayed his hands in front of him. The room was frozen and intent on him now. 

"She broke a different finger every time I got any ideas about friendship." He said it like a dirty word, and remembered asking Nicky if they were friends. "I've had every finger broken twice, at least." Nicky was already looking like he was regretting asking his question, but Allison's expression was merely frozen in place, so he told more truth. 

"That first kiss broke only half my ribs," he gestured to his right side. "But after that, if I so much as looked for too long, she made sure the only thing I remembered for a week was pain." Dan made a low sound in her throat, but he ignored it. Allison was scowling now. 

"She didnt care if it was a boy or girl, Nicky," he said in German, knowing Nicky's own past with such methods. But his mother had not been a bigot, she was simply ruthless. 

He switched back to English, "She was right to. Wanting intimacy means trust. And trust means death when you're running. I broke every rule of hers when I chose this," he gestured at the room, and rubbed his hands over his armbands where Lola's handiwork was, "And it should have cost me my life." He wasn't yelling, but his voice was clear and stonier than ever. And no one moved. 

"So when I say," he went on savagely, "that I don't swing: I mean that I am neither straight nor gay." The horrified look on everyones faces, the green tinge of Nicky's skin was suddenly guilty and let him know that his words had worked. 

He stood to leave, and looked over them but met none of their eyes except Aaron's, remembering his horrid accusations at the cabin over spring break. He said his last words with a decisiveness that he hoped would shut them all up for good. 

"No matter that I'm in Andrew's bed." 

He turned before his words landed and went back to his room, done with them for the night. 

"Wow," he heard Aaron say as the door shut behind him, "They really do deserve each other. Don't they?"


End file.
